I arrived into Butterworth by bus from the Cameron Highlands and took the ferry across to George Town on the island of Penang, the ‘Pearl of the Orient’.

Penang, I had read, is famed for its food. Naturally, I assumed therefore that Penang curry must come from there and I was a bit surprised by my failure to find anyone serving this curry during my stay. It is only now that a little bit of research tells me that Penang (or Panang) curry actually comes from Thailand. Oops.

Foody mix-ups aside, the highlight of my visit was the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, where I did a tour with a very amusing UNESCO Heritage specialist. (In fact, all of George Town is a heritage site.) Cheong Fatt Tze, she told us, was ‘the Rockefeller of the east’, richer than all of China. Ambitious from the start, he wanted to be a businessman from the age of 12 and left home at 15. Soon he left China for Indonesia, where he became a water carrier for a rich family – and married the daughter! (As an aside: Cheong Fatt Tze came from a poor Hakka family, and the women of this Han Chinese people were known as ‘the big-footed women of China’ since they refused to continue the tradition of binding their daughters’ feet.)

The house itself was built in 1890-98, though the style is that of 300 years prior. The architecture is a merging of East and West, with Chinese symbols like that for ‘happiness’ placed at the main entrance but European-style iron grills, art nouveau stained glass and fake marble (the latter costing more, given the need to bring over European artists, than real marble would have cost). It is built according to basic feng shui principles, with water in front, a mountain at the back, and the house itself built on a slope (artificially constructed as there was no slope!). A clever copper pipe system on the roof and through the walls, with a drain in the main courtyard, means that the house has never had any problems despite flooding in the rest of the town. With 220 windows, a huge staff was required just to open and close the windows at night and when it rained.

Cheong Fatt Tze was aged 74 when he had his last son, his wife (his seventh, and his favourite) 24. In his will he stipulated that the house could not be sold until this last son died, which he did in 1979. When the house was sold at auction in 1990, it was full of members of the Cheong family as well as 34 squatter families. There was a thick layer of dust on all the surfaces – according to our guide, no one felt obliged to do any cleaning since they didn’t own the house – and this preserved a lot of the materials over the years. Today, the house is ‘unofficially’ a hotel – they don’t yet have a permit because of the wooden floors, which would need to be reinforced with concrete!

The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion is also knowns as the Blue Mansion. Can you guess why?The weather in George Town was predictably unpredictable: each day, the skies would turn from clear blue to dark grey within minutes, and I learned to pack my umbrella as well as the fan that I bought at the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion.The following day, I started out on the Lonely Planet walking tour, passing the Supreme Court, the City Hall and the Town Hall. It was at this point that I became the subject of a photo series by an Indonesian family, who insisted on each getting photos standing next to me. Hmm.I continued my film tourism by visiting sites that feature in Anna and the King and, as a result, went round singing Getting to know you everywhere I went (wrong film: the musical version was The King and I with Yul Brenner; details, details)… The Protestant Cemetery is where the REAL Thomas Leonowens (Anna’s husband) is buried. Unfortunately it was closed off due to construction work so I couldn’t go in and find the actual grave.The Grand Ballroom of the Town Hall became the Royal Court Room in Anna and the King.Swettenham Pier became Bangkok Harbour in the film. I had intended to travel on the next morning to the island of Langkawi by ferry, and even bought the ticket. I was dissuaded, however, by my contact at my next hotel who said it was an ‘experience’ and the reviews on TripAdvisor which were mixed but overwhelmingly negative. I wasn’t so much worried about getting seasick as the fact that you had to stay indoors for the whole three-hour journey. Instead I bought an AirAsia ticket for a short flight of 25 minutes.We’ve had the Blue Mansion, let’s call this… the Green Mansion? (Also known as the Pinang Peranakan Mansion.)Armenian Street was the setting of the Bangkok street scenes in Anna and the King, thanks to its already-very-convincing 19th century merchant houses.Armenian Street today also draws a crowd thanks to its street art created by Lithuanian-born Ernest Zacharevic.The area around Armenian Street houses many of the town’s clan houses, built to honour the ancestral spirits. The Khoo Kongsi clan complex was like a little village for the Khoo family, who were wealthy Straits traders. This is the temple, built in 1906; in the film Anna and the King, it is where Tuptim was captured by the Palace Guards.I did, of course have some curry, albeit of the non-Penang kind. The atmosphere at the Red Garden Food Court was – unusual…

Next up Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah…

The practical bit:

Ferry from Butterworth (mainland) to George Town: From the bus terminal (having arrived, in my case, from the Cameron Highlands/Ipoh), you walk up and over the pedestrian bridge to the ferry terminal. The ferry costs RM 1.20 but you need to exchange your ringgit for what I took to be old currency as the machines, I guess, haven’t been updated! It runs every 15-20 minutes. (I could also have continued by bus across the bridge but it would have meant a longer taxi journey.)

Hotel in Penang: I had contacted the Muntri Mews Boutique Hotel for a single room but it was full so they gave me a family suite at the newer Muntri Mews Residence for the same price. Very nice, with great service including shutters being opened and closed and fans and air con being turned on and off in the mornings and evenings, and with breakfast served at the café across the road.

Travelling from Penang (George Town) to Langkawi:Flights are operated by AirAsia and Firefly, the latter a subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines. My single ticket including luggage and seat reservation with AirAsia was RM 189 (without the extras it would have been RM 111). If you want to brave the ferry, you should get the ticket in advance from one of the kiosks outside Swettenham Pier for RM 66.50.